In this episode of WTFFF, 3D Printing Nerd Power Guides, we have an interview with quite a character, Joel Telling. His YouTube channel is “3D Printing Nerd.” We love that name! He really has a lot of fun with what he does here on his YouTube channel, and it’s all about 3D printing, as well as some things non-3D-printing just for fun. He has a lot of videos and 6,000 subscribers.
No companies are providing the entire package of customer service and resources to make customers successful. It’s one of the things we are starting to see changing a little bit in the industry. But until then, these tutorials, which are a lot of what these YouTube videos consist of, are really critical to help people be successful and have the best experience with their 3D printer.
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3D Printing Nerd Power Guides
In this episode of WTFFF, 3D Printing Nerd Power Guides, we have an interview with quite a character, Joel Telling. His YouTube channel is “3D Printing Nerd.” We love that name! He really has a lot of fun with what he does on his YouTube channel, and it’s all about 3D printing, as well as some things non-3D-printing just for fun. He has a lot of videos and 6,000 subscribers.
The reason we wanted to talk to him today is we really need to pay attention to guys like Joel. There are a bunch of YouTubers out there—like Maker’s Muse, and others who are showing you how these printers work. Some of them are unboxing, revealing, and reviewing, and others are demoing how to print something or how to modify a print. We need these guides in this difficult market.
No companies are providing the entire package of customer service and resources to make customers successful. It’s one of the things we are starting to see changing a little bit in the industry. But until then, these tutorials, which are a lot of what these YouTube videos consist of, are really critical to help people be successful and have the best experience with their 3D printer.
Here are some of the questions from the interview:
Q: How do you decide what tutorial videos to create?
A: So far, the tutorials I try to record are based around things that I find somewhat useful. For example, going over the basics of how to modify an existing 3D model to make it into something that you might want. I recently modified a Darth Vader Model and made it into a Red Bull Cozy using TinkerCAD.
Q: What are the demographics of your YouTube Subscribers?
A: 96% male.
Q: What do you think resonates the most with your subscribers?
A: Everything I do on my videos is not scripted, and my reactions are truthful. For Example, when I removed a 44 hour print from the print bed I waited to remove it until I had the camera set up to record my actual reactions to the difficult process of removing it.
Q: What do you think is the biggest limiting factor in the growth of the 3D Printing market?
A: I think the technology is not quite there yet. It is still kind of an art form to get the printer to work correctly, and you have to be a technician, and the printers are still in the “hackosphere.” Here we go, we haven’t brought the technology to where my Mom could use it. The Dremel is so close, but it is not there yet. Also the printable file ecosystem is not there yet. When my mom can get what she wants to print easily from the printer itself, and customize it, then the market will have tipped.
Q: Do you know of any 3D Printer manufacturers that are providing a complete solution to provide the best customer experience, or do you find that they are focusing on one technical detail or another, and leaving the rest up to the user or other companies to figure out?
A: You bring up an incredibly interesting point, because globally I think we are seeing a race to the bottom, so many cloned printers are being made instead of making new original printers furthering the design or the industry. Many companies seem to be there just to make a buck instead of trying to advance the technology and the industry as a whole. Two printers that I have seen that appear to be trying to advance the industry forward, one is Arcadian with their Arc one 3D printer, and the other is the gMax from gCreate.
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That interview was a lot more fun than we expected it would be. I thought it would be fun; if you have watched any of his videos, you can see how funny he is, and he is really playful. That keeps it interesting. If it were really dry and nothing but technical talk, people wouldn’t keep coming back and listening to more unless they really needed some technical insight. Because it’s fun, people gravitate to it. Whether or not you are totally interested in making a Darth Vader cozy, it doesn’t really matter, but it is obvious that he has fun doing it, and that is infectious. I think that really gets you excited about 3D printing, no matter what you want to print.
The lessons that are taught—it’s not condescending at all, it’s just, “Hey, here’s what I’m doing, and I’m sharing it with you.” It’s the universal tools and processes that work no matter what you are making. You can apply what you learn by watching to your particular situation.
There are a bunch of these YouTubers out there. There are power guides all over the place. We’re going to post a few of them up on the blog that were mentioned in the episode and some that we discussed with Joel after. You can find those on 3dstartpoint.com.
At 3D Start Point, we are trying to provide a forum for people to come in and find out the missing pieces to the puzzle that they need to be more successful and get more satisfaction and productivity out of their 3D printing experience. Hopefully, you will find a guide that either resonates with what you want to make and what you want to do or resonates with your sense of humor or the kinds of products that you like. That makes it more fun for you as you are learning 3D printing.
What we were talking about with Joel about these companies using the video tutorial process or using videos to review products as well as using them to help people learn how to use the printer is so critically important to the future. Finding someone who resonates with your target audience and really speaks to them is so important.
Especially with so many companies that are not USA companies, or aren’t domestic to where they want to sell, they may not understand how best to communicate to people in another market in a different country. This is one way that they can be more effective reaching out to some of these vloggers.
In our recent experience, we found a tremendous company called Replay Collective. Our friends Nate and Christian are doing something really tremendous, connecting vloggers with large subscriber bases to brands so that the vloggers can produce better videos and can be subsidized by the brands. These vloggers can keep going because of this.
This is not Joel’s day job, but wouldn’t it be great if it was? Wouldn’t he be able to perform such a better service if it could be his day job? Someone like Replay Collective can connect them up so they can have some sponsorship support to help them as they go forward to help provide these tutorials. This is so critically important to the future of 3D printing.
I don’t know what the best way to do this is, but the reality is that those of us in the blogosphere and the podcast realm and irregular bloggers all need to support each other. There is enough common interest.
We are not into competition; we are into collaboration. We are not here to keep other mediums or other people reaching out into the community down and making ourselves out to be the best. We are into collaboration; there is room for everybody in this space, and everybody has a different flavor or niche as to who they are talking to and what brand they might resonate with.
That is where the future is, though: getting this ground swell of support for moving 3D printing to the mainstream, to where our family can use it. You get it to that place, and all of a sudden, everyone benefits: the consumers, the printer companies, the material manufacturers. This is where the market has to move.
That is what excites me most about what we are doing. It really does. I want to get to the point where our moms were actually using it. Tracy’s mom is an artist, and she has done Photoshop and other things. She has enough interest and skill in it that she could be great at it. But she is still daunted by the hacking technology that is there and is required. It is too complicated for her, and not that she isn’t an intelligent person, she definitely is, but she would not be patient with the reality of how you have to educate yourself to be effective. It’s not helping her process for what she wants to achieve; in that sense, it’s only creating a whole new set of things she has to learn and do. That doesn’t really help anyone. It has to further what you want to make and what you want to do, and she wants to continue being the artist that she is.
It really shows you how much foresight and initiative someone like Bridgette Mongeon had to integrate 3D printing into her sculpting process, where it doesn’t take over her process. It’s not all about 3D printing; it’s just another tool in her toolbox.
But if you remember her story right, she was forced to do it because she had an injury to her hand, where she had to find an alternative method. She really sought it out because she was driven to continue to do what she wanted to do, which was sculpt. That is where she got in and was willing to go through the technical mountain of a learning curve that needed to be climbed for her particular process because her drive to create was so important to her. When someone can just incorporate it as an easy tool, they are going to do it.
Regardless of how she got into it, I think her message is so important. It really could and should apply to all kinds of artists who are not physically disabled for a period of time. It’s just another tool in the toolbox that can really speed things up for you and make your art go to a next level.
I’m excited for the new year. I think we are going to look back on 2016 and say, “Wow, look how things have moved forward.” Joel is right: in two years, 24 months, after 2016 and 2017, in 2018, we are going to hit that swoop of a hockey stick. But it’s starting to speed up; I feel the momentum speeding up from all the comments from you guys out there, and I hear it from companies and the general interest from the public.
Happy New Year!
gMax 3D Printer Unboxing Video:
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